Tuesday, 17 November 2015

Colonel Blimp speaks his mind

More pragmatism.

Yesterday, I heard an RAF Tornado jet fighter or two going overhead. Today, I passed some military transporters in Wiltshire, transporting a few gigantic armoured vehicles, all painted in DESERT colours.

Also yesterday, Corbyn told his fellow party members that he would never condone a shoot-to-kill policy against obvious terrorists on the streets of this country. The man is an idiot, but a useful idiot none the less. Above all, we must continue to beat France at football as if nothing has happened.

This is what we (NATO, UAE and Russia) need to do:

Get a ground force of about 15,000 troops over to the Middle East, and kill as many of the ISIL bastards as we can, with the minimum of civilian casualties - the latter is easier said than not done. Get back the strategic places and help the Kurds and Yazedis.

I reckon that if around half of mobilised ISIL forces are killed, then that would sort it out, allowing for a 'hearts and minds' exercise to follow.

Of course, there would be a hell of a lot of innocent adults and children killed at the same time, but do you think that this would be a price worth paying in the long run? Who knows.

How easy is it for old men like me to give this sort of good advice. I was born after National Service was mandatory.

23 comments:

A severe thrashing seems in the works. Too bad we don't have old terriorist seeking missels; it's the ill used youngsters I feel badly about. I wonder about them being whipped on be rhetoric and perhaps wishing themselves back home abd sitting down to dinner.

I heard a theory yesterday from someone who has written a book about radicalisation.

Most of the Paris killers were recruited from a bunch of petty criminals and dope-smokers. They were - he says - given a reason to live (or die) and when they punish young beer-drinkers, drug-takers and small-time thieves, they are symbolically punishing themselves.

If young Algerians in France perceive themselves to be the third or fourth generation to be forced into petty crime to survive because of national prejudice, then they are the easiest people to recruit. The young have a very strong sense of justice (even if it is misplaced), but it fades as they get older.

There was a time when almost all ISIS members were marching in line down the street somewhere in Iraq. Photographers were there to record the scene; but why were no bombs released? Just yesterday I saw another film of them showing their obvious strength, including huge mobile long range missiles; again why no bombs?

We were told by Margaret Thatcher that our spy planes could read newspaper headlines through CLOUD, so we were confused as to how Argentina's invasion of the Falklands took her by surprise a couple of weeks later.

Ineffective and weak politicians and the steady creep of political correctness taking over from common sense and fear of being called Islamaphobic all add up to fucking useless decisions being made and the mess we are in and the cause of all the missed opportunities.

Everything they have done in the last 10 years has contributed greatly to this sorry mess. Even if ISIS would have risen with Saddam Hussein still in power, we certainly made their job a lot easier by ousting him. Arguably, one of the most damaging cuts that Thatcher made was getting rid of the Arab specialist civil servants in the foreign office, most of whom were recruited directly from SOAS.

They are unlikely to have risen if Saddam was still there, the balance of shites to Sunnis changed after Saddam. Arabs are difficult to do business with, what would a group of poxy civil servants know about murdering extremist fanatics?

That was Thatcher's stupid attitude as well, and now we go into these areas virtually blind from a lack of credible intelligence as a result. This is why the Americans had to pay local informers to help them in Iraq - I think there was only one Arabic speaker in the whole U.S. Army, and he was treated with extreme suspicion.

Here's a particularly stupid example of how things can go wrong through your particularly stupid attitude: The Americans interned a 14 year-old boy for years, because the Arab interpreter's word for 'money' was the same as the boy's own dialect word for 'vegetables'. THAT'S what I am calling stupid.

Actually I believe it was a security services conspiracy. (Mrs Thatcher was not involved even posthumously). The bomb making paraphernalia found in the Paris hotel room was of course planted and the media invited in to film it. I am not joking.

I understand that Blair was the rightful inheritor of Thatcher's most extreme policies. Yes, of course I blame Thatcher for everything bad we are reaping the fruits of today - if you refuse to acknowledge this truth, then you are not taking any notice of history, plain and simple as it is spread out behind you. I know you are not stupid, but you don't half behave as though you are sometimes.

I stop short of the conspiracy theories as you have presented them until conclusive proof that thEy are accurate - I am not quite that mad, yet.

For what it is worth, I'm with you on the kill off the leaders of this gang with as few as possible of the innocents. Others will take their place and try to continue their terrorism at home and abroad, but eventually, I think wiser heads will rule and we may get a peaceful outcome.It will take years though. Not a quick fix.

They talk of 'cutting the head off the snake', but - as with Al Qaida - it is more of a slow-worm than a snake. Cut a bit off, and it will wriggle off and grow a new bit in hiding.

Once again, they not only use the internet to great advantage, but they model themselves on it too. You can destroy all but one of all the computers in the world, and there will still be the network there to use in the future.

It's even more simple than that. Slow-worms actually shed bits of themselves when under attack, leaving us staring in horror at the writhing thing on the ground as they scuttle off to hide. Think suicide bombers.

I really just thank goodness that I am old and that also I am in no position to influence what is done about the whole situation Tom. So very many innocent men, women and most of all children (a whole generation) have died and/or suffered.

I do believe greed and the desire for oil caused this latest trouble in the Middle East. If after the 1970s "energy crisis," the US had told the Middle East to go pound sand and ceased doing business with them, Saddam may or may not have come into power. I feel most likely US involvement with Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan would not have occurred, so there's a chance that the current generation of 20-somethings there would not have felt as disenfranchised as they do now. (I read an article about the typical Daesh, and most are 20-something men who have been in freefall for much of their youth, which explained a bit about their disconnection.--Not that that makes me an expert)

Of course, no telling what first the USSR then Russia would have done without the US sticking its nose in there. So, this whole situation or one like it might have occurred.

If you're dealing with a "kill or be killed" sort of group, then diplomacy isn't all that effective. It's also undermined if your country is selling arms to these people while saying you don't want to fight. Again, greed gets in the way. Would a Trojan horse sort of move work? I dunno, but i feel we must do something.

I also feel bad for the innocent people who were simply born into this situation and want to find another place to live.

Funny, I'm ranting and raging on FB the last couple of days because of American lack of decency and, oh, what's that word?? Oh yeah, courage. "Oh I'm so scared to let a refugee child into my community because they might have terrorist cooties! The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Can we impeach Obama yet?"

I've been really quite immoderate and enjoyed the hell out of it.

And on the other hand, my idea of how to deal with the situation would appear the most coldhearted and bloody minded of the lot.